There’s no space in Bangkok left untouched, no discarded patch of land underneath a tangle of elevated roadways, no plot too harsh and uninviting, that doesn’t have at least four or five vendors pitching something, be it food, motor parts, lottery tickets, keys made on order, outdoor tailors, and haircuts. No placid backdrop your eyes can rest on to give your senses and brain a break.

File this one under “paragraphs of note”. Chris Arnade at his best.

I’ve updated my now page. The update includes where I am right now, which is Savannah, Georgia, where I am attending a medical conference. But you can’t escape DC: I was sitting at the bar having lunch when a couple couldn’t help overhearing where I lived as I was chatting with the bartender. “Hey, we’re from DC too”. Small world! Where in DC? “Oh, we live downtown, we’re both lobbyists.”

Of course they were. One for a private healthcare equity firm, the other for medium-sized pharmaceutical. We did not delve deeper.

Fall mood.

Today’s Chris Arnade Walks the World newsletter features a guest post by Lilly Lynch, whose writing I’ve followed on and off for almost a decade now. Georgia has never been on my list of must-visit countries, and is even less so now after reading her post. So it goes…

🚂 I have just completed a too-long Ipsos survey about Amtrak and felt that this was the right emoji to use. Living in DC and traveling often to New York and Boston I dream of a high-speed train, the kind Japan has had for 60 years, zipping through the East Coast. Acela is not it: boarding is haphazard, the seats are grimy, the food is an embarrassment and I could tolerate all of that if not for the 70–80 miles per hour it averages. By comparison, average speed of Shinkasen trains is 150–200 mph. Sad.

Matthew Yglesias had a good writeup of the topic a few years ago, and of course nothing has changed since then except for Amtrak getting an additional sheen of “sustainability” that will make them want to change even less. The Ipsos poll even asked me about “land cruises” — slow rides through scenic routes with stops for sightseeing — but did not mention high-speed rail at all. The questions revealed Amtrak’s priorities: wallow in mediocrity, hide behind low carbon emissions and don’t give a rat’s ass for improving service.

The family looking forward to one last weekend at the beach, but no:

Swimming was banned at beaches in Ocean City and on Assateague Island on Sunday after used hypodermic needles and other medical waste washed ashore, authorities said.

Maryland officials closed Assateague State Park to swimming, wading, surfing or any other activities in the ocean. The Assateague Island National Seashore, which is in both Maryland and Virginia, prohibited swimming along “ALL” ocean-facing beaches, according to alerts sent Sunday. The island is 37 miles long.

Most news is noise; local news is an exception.

Here are four good articles on this fourth day of the week:

• The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it
• The State of Culture, 2024
• A Decade Later, ‘The Leftovers’ Seems Almost Like Prophecy
• “ugly” drawings from korea

I’m a fan of Chris Arnade’s newsletter, but the latest post about the (stalled) American Dream just didn’t sit right with me. He travels through the rural US (Wheeling WV, Belmont OH, Bristol TN) and, surprise surprise, finds only disillusioned people who think the Dream is dead. His takeaway is that:

We have an ugly, selfish, winner-take-all culture — devoid of community, meaning, and the majestic — and almost all our policy is built around the notion that individual liberty, with the most stuff at the cheapest price, is the ultimate good.

The article reads like a travelogue of a man shocked, just completely shocked, to find so much snow and little if any sunlight on his July trip to Antarctica. Now I can’t speak to the collective American “we” for I am a mere green card holder — and a recent one at that — but this has not been my experience living in the US these past dozen and some years. I can think of many (large, populous) parts of the the country where the most stuff at the cheapest price has not been deemed the ultimate good, where there is still a sense of community, and where things still can be majestic.

The cheapest-price mentality is a consequence of being poor, not its cause. If it still prevailed everywhere, how could we explain the rise of the farmers' market, of the local bookstore, of Etsy? If none of those had a presence in places that Arnade had visited, well, maybe it’s because they are not compatible with poverty whereas the Dollar General and other discount store chains are. And to be clear — there is nothing wrong with cheap-as-affordable (in contrast to cheep-as-poor-quality): Costco is, unironically, up there with the Internet and 1970s Hollywood as one of the non-material Wonders of the Modern World.

There is also community for those willing to look. Just yesterday I accompanied our rising second-grader to a playdate-slash-class reunion held at a community garden cared for and maintained by 20-some year-old volunteers who donate all the produce. In a few weeks the parents and the kids will meet up to for a neighborhood cleanup. At the tween’s middle school we’ve collected money so that all the classmate can go to the annual field trip, and we’ll be doing the same this year. Our ANC meetings are well-attended, if occasionally contentious, and I consider myself an introvert living in one of the less communal neighborhoods in the city.

I also can’t wrap my head around the accusation that the United States are no longer aiming for the majestic. The new World War I memorial seems like it will be majestic. On the other end of the spectrum, the Sphere certainly is. So is the Olympic medal count. And the most majestic of all is America’s awe-inspiring natural beauty, which it still protects more than most other countries.

But these things aren’t everywhere — you need to travel around to get to the place that’s the right fit for you. Most people Arnade encountered were wizened old souls with not much spirit left in the tank. This is the tradeoff: other places he recently visited, whether in Europe or Africa, were gentler to the people who stayed — because they are the majority! But that is not the American Dream, which promises a safe and comfortable life for those of hard work and determination. Next time Arnade is in the area, may I suggest he visit Pittsburgh and talk to anyone who’s left Wheeling, West Virginia? It is telling that the only person Arnade spoke to who still believed in the Dream was a recent transplant to the area, going from a horrible situation to a slightly less bad one. I can only hope she will continue the journey.

“Street hoodlums” is a good phrase that fell out off fashion. Or am I just getting old?